Human use of biomass has become a major component of the global biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen. The use of land for biomass production (e.g. cropland) is among the most important pressures on biodiversity. At the same time, biomass is indispensable for humans as food, animal feed,...

This paper discusses sustainability problems related to socioeconomic energy flows based upon the societal metabolism approach. Contrary to conventional energy statistics that only include energy used in technical devices, this approach considers all kinds of energy flows related to human...